One of the biggest surprises – and announcements – from Mayor Tom Henry’s State of the City address had little to do with city government at all.FORT WAYNE – Just a year after a major runway improvement project at Smith Field, the airfield’s primary runway will receive similar attention with the help of federal money.
The Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority announced this week it received almost $1.1 million from the Federal Aviation Administration’s airport improvement program. The program regularly provides cash to airports to maintain and upgrade infrastructure such as lighting and runways.
Last year, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act provided $1.1 million to reconstruct and repave the shorter runway at the small general aviation airfield on Fort Wayne’s north side.
With the new funding, crews will remove and replace pavement and will mill and apply a fresh coat of asphalt to other sections of the primary runway, the airport authority said.
That runway will remain a 100-foot-wide strip so that its lighting can continue to be used. The shorter runway, which has no lighting, was rebuilt to be 25 feet narrower to meet current standards, said Scott Hinderman, director of operations and facilities.
Wayne Asphalt, the winning bidder, is expected to begin work this month, and the project could wrap up by November, the airport authority said.
Officials expected it would be a challenge to obtain funding for the Smith Field work but included it among the list of projects for completion this year, expecting the money and project to get federal approval for 2011 instead, Hinderman said.
“The little airport will have quite the facelift,” he said.
In 1994, the airport authority repaired the intersection of the field’s two landing strips. But the last significant runway work was completed in 1976, when the city of Fort Wayne still owned Smith Field.
After years of debate, the authority is committed to keeping the airfield open. Just since 2007, the airport authority took over direct operations at the airfield, approved a long-term plan that opened the doors to federal funding, installed an automated weather station and built a hangar that serves as a learning lab for aeronautical maintenance students.
Long-term plans call for relocating and lengthening a runway and building additional hangars.
Although the two landing strips intersect, the shorter landing strip will remain open to pilots during construction. The runways will be closed for three to four hours toward the end of construction while contractors paint new centerlines, Hinderman said.
The authority will give pilots advance notice of the brief closure, he said.
